Sandra Reimer

In the cold light of January, after the glut of Christmas magnanimity toward family, friends and strangers, it’s good to reflect on the scope and impact of our generosity. I…

“Is Jesus first in your life?” MB Mission general director Randy Friesen asked the 250 people gathered for AWAKE, a pilot team-based event held at Waterloo Mennonite Brethren Church (WMB) in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., Sept. 20–22. Organized by MB Mission in partnership with the Canadian Conference of MB Churches’ church planting arm, C2C Network, AWAKE was designed to renew individuals and local churches in their love for God, love for their cities, and passion for global outreach.

As the pile of loot in a book giveaway dwindled to the dregs, a writers’ conference I was attending offered a self-help book for Christians who have a problem with…

Seeing an emotionally distressed young man sitting cross-legged and shirtless on a downtown sidewalk, I asked, “Are you okay?” He said he wasn’t, but he could handle it on his…

I had a second flat tire. It was the first day of an awareness-raising bike ride in Honduras on a Mennonite Central Committee learning tour. David (pronounced Da-veed), the mechanic who…

As I was listening to a recent sermon, the speaker disparagingly remarked that social media are all about vanity. Though there are potential pitfalls with using Facebook, Twitter, and other…

Your marriage is boring. You’re not getting anything out of the time you spend together. The sex is uninspiring. You’re not growing as a person. It’s time to start shopping around for a new spouse.

Conflict – whether it’s a disagreement with a spouse, a personality clash with a co-worker, or a church split in the making – fills most of us with anxiety. Avoiding conflict preserves an uneasy peace, but it’s a stifling stillness, like a long-shut room, air heavy with mildew and dust. Unresolved conflict goes underground, where it brews and festers until it erupts like a volcano, spewing molten hatred and bitterness, ruining relationships, ministries, workplaces, families, and lives.

I’m a bit of a self-help junkie. I especially enjoy popular business books about goal setting and achieving amazing results. All there in black and white, it looks so simple. Set a goal, stick to that goal, measure your results, then set the next goal.

I was outraged. Back in June, our friends had booked a provincial park campsite for us. We were planning to stay two nights one August weekend. But our friends were only allowed to book the Friday night because the park was too full.

My Mennonite mother-in-law can scrape the last molecule out of a jar with a spatula. To avoid wasting food, leftovers are passed around her table until someone relents and eats the last tomato. Simple living – including conserving resources, cooking from scratch, making clothing, recycling, and repairing used items – is a valuable part of the Mennonite tradition.

In the past, I’ve gone door-to-door conducting surveys related to faith and the church, gone on mission trips, and even worked at a drop-in centre where we lived out and talked about the gospel. I also have a few books about evangelism on my shelf – Becoming a Contagious Christian by Bill Hybels, Just Walk Across the Room also by Hybels, and my most recent addition, Gospel in Life by Timothy Keller.

I don’t know about you, but when I first became a Christian, I tried to have it all together so that I would be a good advertisement for the faith. I imagined myself a walking billboard, flashing “Believe in Jesus, and you too can have a perfect life!”

I have a confession to make. I am not Mennonite Brethren by birth. I do have a last name that gives me some MB street cred, but it’s a gift from my husband whose forebears were born in Russia. He married me to widen the gene pool.